Expat. Living. Observing. Sharing.

Tag Archives: Bathroom

So the sewage container at work, (a built-in metal box of sorts, which collects the dirty dish water) is plugged up this morning. That means it has to be emptied of said water and repaired. The stench wafting up to the reception area is unbelievable. I’m literally stewing inside what I would imagine the bathroom in hell would smell like after Al Bundy took a turn in there. The only positive aspect of this smelly situation is that we don’t have many clients at the hotel this week. None of them will have to die in vain from blunt force nasal trauma.

This is literally the face that I make when I try to breathe through my nose.

Ah, routine…nature’s dejavu. It inundates my days with structure and purpose and ultimately I revel in the comfort of a daily schedule. It’s like a well-oiled machine: stopping for coffee in the morning, the drive to work, the daily work checklist to sift through, then lunchtime at home, an afternoon nap, a few errands, and ultimately dinner and good conversation in the front yard under the nighttime sky.

Surprises though can be refreshing. As reassuring as routine is, it’s nice to break the mold every once in a while; kind of like having extra jalapenos in a burrito – a nice little kick in an otherwise ordinary meal.

What constitutes a “jalapeno” in my world can vary from day-to-day. Finding a tiny little gecko in the house the other night – and proceeding to drown it in my toilet – definitely constitutes a routine kicker.

Post-mortem I was full of regret – why didn’t I just throw him into the back yard? Give him a chance to live its simple mosquito-eating existence? Am I really destined to be a gecko killer? But he got the best of me. I saw him slithering down the wall and all I could see was myself in bed at night, mouth agape (as it usually is when I’m sleeping), and little G-man quietly slithering into my open mouth. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

I grabbed him with a piece of toilet paper, my grasp firm, and I dropped him in the toilet. I flushed. Success!? No, unfortunately for G-man he was still alive and trying to crawl out of the toilet bowl. His little tail, by this point dismembered from the rest of his body, was squirming rapidly, desperately trying to find the body it once belonged to. I shut the toilet bowl and tried to think. What do I do now? I can’t just put my hands in the toilet and pull him out of his watery grave. I decided the next best thing to do was pour some bleach in the toilet bowl. Can someone answer me this: do geckos have nine lives? Because he just kept going despite the bleach; and despite the Windex that I kept spraying.

In the end I resorted to pouring massive amounts of water from the shower head to finally say goodbye and send him on a farewell tour of my toilet pipe. Goodbye, little gecko. It was never meant to be for the two of us because you turned out to be a bad jalapeno.

Good luck, wherever you are.

A good jalapeno, however, can really make your day. I decided to take a little break from smoking a certain herbaceous substance and suddenly I found myself sleeping a lot better, feeling more rested and more energetic. The result of this was an early wake-up yesterday morning. Not just early – I’m talking butt-crack of dawn early. I was up before the sun even – 5 a.m. to be exact.

I walked outside to my balcony and reveled in the morning sky – the early hours of dawn, so soothing and relaxing. It’s a pleasure to be awake, really. I sat outside for a couple of hours enjoying the show, completely at ease. An outstanding jalapeno, indeed…